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The Hunt Is On 3.5

It took Cameron a couple of minutes to decide what to do next. Telling the agent assigned to ensure she didn’t leave her room that she discovered a way to track Gladwell might not go over that well. There was a chance they would all think this was a trap, orchestrated by Gladwell to lure them somewhere and kill them. They wouldn’t believe her and when they saw she had broken out of her restraints, they’d be doubly suspicious and lock her up somewhere far more secure, somewhere she could never break out of.

So she’d do this without the SAA’s help.

They had left her in her room, with all her belongings exactly where they should be. She took her burner phone out of its hiding spot, the inside pocket of a jacket tucked in the middle of a pile of clothes. Cameron sent Creed a text, telling she needed people willing and strong to go up against Gladwell.

He was always so good about responding to texts in a timely manner.

Already done. Do you have a location for me?

She replied:

not yet but will soon i’ll be in touch thanks

First things first, Cameron needed to get out of this room and arm herself. She normally kept her equipment in her room but agents had taken all of it after the Gladwell fight to clean it. It was standard procedure, couldn’t have their heroes walking around covered in blood, that didn’t help to make the public feel safe. A little inconvenient but fixable, she had been a highly successful thief, after all. Sneaking around here was no big deal.

Not all her weapons, she realized, spotting a gun sitting on her desk beside the keyboard. On second thought, no, this wasn’t her gun, a regulation stun gun given to her by the SAA. Its design was different, much sleeker with smooth curved lines and a nice round barrel. It was painted green and black, matching her costume’s color scheme, and had a dial on the side. There was a note attached, written in incredibly neat and precise handwriting. I had some extra time and finished early. A manual is in your desk drawer.

It didn’t seem all that complicated. Point, pull the trigger, then someone got hurt. Cameron opened up her drawer and took out a thin stack of stapled papers. She glanced at the sub-headings. A lot of dealt with how to take care of the gun and the rest was on its features. She read the section on the dial. The higher the number the dial was turned to, the more damage the gun would do. On its higher settings, it’d be strong enough to kill a person.

Cameron tossed the manual onto her desk and tucked the gun into the pocket of her jacket, checking to make sure it was off first. This would be a good offense, now she needed to go get her defense.

There were two options for escape, either through the window or the door. Going through the door required knocking out every agent stationed out there, which, honestly, she could do. It would take time though, and be loud. A black screen covered the window from the outside, blocking her view. She needed to see to use teleportation. The screen may or may not have some kind of alarm or sensor, going off the instant someone messed with the screen. Both options had different risks attached.

Window was definitely the smarter choice.

Cameron teleported the screen to the floor of her room, being careful to have it laid flat against the floor so it wouldn’t make any noise and alert anyone standing guard outside. From there, she teleported herself onto the rooftop across the street from her window. Another series of teleports, using other rooftops as landing points, brought her to the other side of the SAA building where she got a clear look at the inside of a window. And then she was inside again.

It was a workout room, full of equipment. A row of treadmills faced the window and the three agents using them were startled as she suddenly appeared. She gave them a quick smile and ran out, not giving them time to question or stop her. She didn’t know if they were informed about the current situation about Gladwell and her being connected. Cameron walked briskly the rest of the way. Running would attract too much attention but she did have a time limit here.

There were agents guarding the equipment room where costumes and weapons were repaired, washed, or made. Their hands immediately went to the guns – only stun guns – at their sides. They knew. Cameron teleported the closest stun gun to her hand and shot the other agent. She fell, and her partner joined her a second later. Quickly and efficiently, she searched for one of their access cards and then used it to get inside the equipment room. Her costume was still there, sealed behind a glass case and worn by a mannequin. Another use of her power had her costume against a long table, laid out nicely.

She changed fast and holstered her new gun onto her utility belt, tossing her phone into a pouch while she was at it.

She rushed out of the room to the nearest window to teleport herself outside, giving only a second’s thought to how easy this was. Cameron was probably only a minor concern compared to Gladwell.

After moving a safe distance from the SAA, Cameron stopped to figure out the next phase in her plan.

Obviously finding Gladwell was what she needed to do now so she could tell Creed and he could send in his guys but there were some problems she needed to sort out. Deeper level super-vision and teleporting didn’t mesh well together. Deeper level super-vision didn’t mesh well with any kind of action, really. It was too hard to focus on the super-vision and anything else that needed to be done.

But she didn’t have a whole lot of time to waste. Who knew when Gladwell wised up to what Cameron was about to do?

If she didn’t already know.

As long as Gladwell move around too much, Cameron could use super-vision to find what direction the strip of light headed to and then moved in that direction, stopping occasionally to see where the link was pointing to now.

The idea worked even if it got annoying when she accidentally went too far and had to go back and then move in the correct direction. Throughout it all, Gladwell mostly stayed where she was.

Cameron wanted to laugh when she realized where she ended up. Of all the places Gladwell could have chosen, she had picked the stupid Italian restaurant Cameron visited the other day, the one she searched and overheard an oddly familiar voice talk over the phone to an employee, the one Michael went to because he had business there. It was a scary thought, Testament and Gladwell working together to kill Creed and those loyal to him or worse.

Never could leave out the worse part.

Criminals didn’t tend to be nice to their enemies.

Her heart was pounding hard enough Cameron worried she might pass out. Come on Pierce, keep it together. It’s just one crazy supervillain, not like you’re fighting an army of them.

She took a deep breath.

Wait, shit, Gladwell had the power to duplicate herself.

It was intimidating, to face someone who had been inside her head, knew about the complicated feelings she had for her dad, maybe knew all about the insecurities she tried to ignore until they went away, although they never did. Con men were hardly as effective when people knew they were cons, and Gladwell knew. She took a deep breath, then another until her nerves calmed down.

Cameron retrieved her cell phone from one of the pouches on her belt. She only needed to keep Gladwell distracted for awhile, give time for Creed’s reinforcements to arrive. That was doable, it had to be.

She texted Creed the location and told him to hurry before putting the phone back in its spot.

Now or never.

She teleported from the roof to the ground, right in front of the locked alley door she used to sneak in the first time she was came, looking for Gladwell. There was a nice sort of symmetry to it. Ending where it started – sort of, technically it really started with Ian pissing off Gladwell. The knob turned easily in her hand. Ominous, maybe Gladwell had left it unlocked intentionally. She was cocky and arrogant, of course she had a right to be. You could act however you wanted if nobody had the power to stop you.

This time, she didn’t try to be stealthy. Cameron walked forward, back straight, shoulders squared, boots pounding against the ground. The sounds of her boots were drowned out by a TV, a violent, explosive show or movie playing in the kitchen. She supposed it wouldn’t all that busy at this time, too late for lunch but too early for dinner. She peeked into the kitchen and saw employees sitting around the small TV, attention focused solely on the screen.

Cameron turned on super-vision. No images, just at a level where she could see through invisibility.

Gladwell wasn’t among the employees.

A quick look at the strip of light, and she knew where to go. She teleported to the corner of the kitchen, a few steps away from another door. Her teleportation was silent, it didn’t come with some dramatic visual effect. They wouldn’t realize she was there unless one of them happened to look in her direction. They didn’t. That had to be one entertaining movie, maybe she ought to get the name of it on her way out.

If she got out.

The door didn’t budge when Cameron tried opening it. She sighed, turned her head a little, before teleporting it off its hinges, doorknob included. It fell to the ground beside her with a loud clatter. The employees were looking at her now, warily. One or two pulled out guns, another reached for a knife sitting on top of an unused cutting board.

Definitely weren’t ordinary restaurant workers.

Cameron felt a surge of confidence. It was kinda cute that they thought they stood a chance.

Their weapons were out of their hands and on the ground in front of her before they knew what hit them. Just as easily, she could have teleported it into their skulls and killed them all, provided one of them wasn’t secretly a power.

She smiled at them and her helmet lit up with a smiley face. “You’re missing the good part,” she said, pointing at the television. “Go ahead, watch, I’ll try not to make too much noise.” She winked and the smiley turned into a winky, one eye a dot, the other a straight line, a line curving upwards for a mouth. She bent down and picked up one of the guns. She lightly tossed it up in the air and caught it, for dramatic effect. “Can’t make any promises, not with the company you’ve decided to keep.” One of the employees, a older man with huge arms, slowly inched toward the walk-in freezer, eyes still staring right at her helmet. Cameron lazily pointed the gun at him. He stopped in his tracks.”If I were you, I’d rethink that decision. If I were you, I’d go in the other direction, out that door and into the alley.”

She changed targets, pointed and shot pearly white plate in the sink. The sound of it made most of the employees jump, except the few experienced ones. She had plenty of experience with guns, too much to be surprised at the noise they made. A classic scare tactic, it would make them consciously aware of how easily their brains could be reduced to a bloody smear on the wall.

It took Cameron waving the gun in the direction of the door for the employees to start to leave. She waited until they were gone before barricading the door with all the furniture in the room. She sent another text to Creed, to clarify where in the restaurant Gladwell was. Whoever he was sending shouldn’t have too much problem breaking through the barricade.

Cameron walked through the threshold, down the stairs and into the basement.

Gladwell was waiting for her. She sat on a lumpy sofa, feet propped up on the table, looking like a blonde bombshell. “Well, Cameron, I don’t know what to say. I gave you such a nice offer, I even said I wouldn’t kill you for it, and you decide to spit in my face and come kill me.”

Gun still in her hand, Cameron fired off two shots, one in head, one in the throat. Gladwell’s skin shifted, flowing like waves to push the bullets out so she could heal properly.

Bullets were going to do shit. She dropped the gun and drew the laser gun out of its holster. She turned the dial to five and squeezed the trigger. It wasn’t like the lasers she was used to seeing. There was no brightly colored beam of light shooting through the air. One second she was pulling the trigger and the next, Gladwell was clutching her stomach, in genuine pain. The laser had torn through entire layers, her internal organs visible between the gaps of her arms. The couch she sat on and the wall behind her were untouched.

Cameron followed up with more lasers. If she had an advantage, she was going to take it.

She didn’t get a chance.

Arms from behind her encircled her throat, a choke-hold. Cameron teleported out of her grasp, a foot away from where she had stood. She spun around and saw another Gladwell standing at the foot of the stairs.

Stuck between a Gladwell and a Gladwell.

The one sitting on the couch had recovered and rose to her feet, her hands morphing to deadly sharp swords. She swung and Cameron barely got out of the way in time. There wasn’t a whole lot of room to move here in the basement, especially with another Gladwell standing on the sidelines, eyes gleaming with a predator’s excitement.

Each wave of her arms was calculated to drive Cameron closer to the other Gladwell. The swings came too fast, dodging took too much of her focus for her to teleport away. Guns wouldn’t be useful at this range and the baton was even more useless when Gladwell had the strength to easily knock it out of her hand.

This time, after dodging another swing, Cameron jumped forward, tackling her. There wasn’t enough force behind it to knock Gladwell off her feet but it broke the rhythm they had settled into. Her head was positioned in just the right way to look over Gladwell’s shoulder while their bodies collided. She landed on top of the table, far away from both Gladwells.

The other one already had her hand out, flames extending from her palm to light the table on fire. Instead of jumping off, she teleported again, this time to the foot of the staircase. Then she was back in the kitchen. She turned to face the staircase and shot the ground at the bottom of the steps, a warning. The Gladwells stayed put, out of her line of sight. It gave her time to fiddle with the gun. There wouldn’t be a manual if this was all there was to it. Allison wasn’t that crazy. The gun had a trigger and the stupid dial, no other thing that screamed push me for maximum destructive capabilities.

Push. The thought triggered a memory, a line she saw when she glanced through the manual. If this worked she was going to slap herself later when she wasn’t in life-threatening danger. With her index finger, she pushed the center of the dial down. It moved.

A pillar of flame so big it filled the entire staircase shot out at her. Cameron hurriedly backpedaled. It was dumb, in retrospect, her costume was fireproof.

The Gladwells walked out of the flames, were wreathed in it, smirking as fiendishly as any devil.

Cameron pulled the trigger.

The laser itself was too fast for Cameron to see but the path it left behind wasn’t. It pierced through Gladwell’s head and kept going, cutting through the flames and the wall behind her. That Gladwell fell to the ground.

The other Gladwell was nowhere in sight.

Most of her anyway.

Cameron saw the crimson blade coming out of her stomach before she felt it. Then it was gone and her strength went with it. She fell to the ground, the hand not holding the gun moved to press against the wound.

Gladwell raised her hand above Cameron’s head, like an executioner’s blade, ready to deliver its sentence.

Her dad was. I got the impression that Cameron was just confident that she could keep Gladwell occupied until reinforcements arrived. And honestly if she had discovered super laser mode before going she probably could have. Since she’s supposed to be a crack shot, she can just teleport to get out of trouble, and super-healers apparently go by zombie rules, she could have just shot both of them in the head. Two headshots for a decent shooter in a small enclosed space with a pistol isn’t exactly difficult.

Changed the theme because some people have asked me for something easier on the eyes. Thoughts? I’m still kind of iffy on this, can’t tell if the font color isn’t light enough to read or if people won’t like how the comments are arranged.